Q3, Passage 1 | Deep Well Injections

RC Question 3 Explanation

DISCUSSION: The author’s position on the risks of deep-well injection of hazardous wastes is that it is unsafe and unpredictable. We need to supply a piece of information that would add support to either how it can negatively affect human health or how it is so unpredictable.

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This answer would weaken the author’s claim since it gives the impression that the waste injection wells are far away from groundwater. Thus drinking water wouldn’t be at risk.
This does suggest deep-well injections are unsafe, but we’re concerned with humans who drink the water and are exposed to the waste, not nonhuman organisms.

We’re supposed to support the author’s argument, not their overall view that wells are bad. If I say “You’re gonna do well on the LSAT because you study hard!” my argument is about your study habits. Suppose a friend says “I say they’re gonna do well because a magic genie will give them a 180!” That….helps your LSAT score, but it doesn’t help my argument. I was making an argument about study habits, having you succeed for another reason isn’t supporting me. Likewise, making injection wells bad to something other than humans doesn’t support the author’s claim about humans.
So? Who cares if the wells are far from the facilities. The author never said there are any problems or risks in transporting the waste from industrial site to injection site. Their reasoning focussed on underground risks, and we have to strengthen that reasoning directly.
CORRECT. Paragraph 3 covers this. We already know the flow of underground water is unpredictable, and so we also can’t predict how waste would flow underground. If it was even more unpredictable than we thought, then the risks would be even greater.
This is irrelevant and would weaken the author’s claim. Paragraph three says one problem is we can’t predict underground waste movements. So, better predictions would reduce that problem, weakening the author’s reasoning.